Wednesday, March 30, 2011

I've recently been catching up with the first season of Community, a show replete with meta jokes about other TV series.

In the first season episode "Investigative Journalism" (air date 1/4/10), Jeff (Joel McHale) is pushed into taking over Greendale College's failing newspaper, and his flippant attitude leads the others in the study group to start calling him Hawkeye.

But the M*A*S*H references only start there--Joel starts wearing Hawaiian shirts, and Abed (Danny Pudi) not only builds a still in Joel's office, but asks to be called Radar. Joel's office is even slightly decorated to look like Col. Potter's office, with a big dark green desk.

To top it off, when the show ends, it freeze frames (something Community to this point had never done), complete with M*A*S*H-style on-screen credits and font!

This is the second time M*A*S*H has been referenced on the series (in a previous episode guest star Patton Oswalt, playing the school nurse, refers to himself as "the Hawkeye" around the place). Not only am I finding Community to very smart and very funny, but these M*A*S*H homages make watching it that much more fun!

But thanks to an eBay auction, I've learned two things: 1)the doll body type was the same model as the Hawkeye one (with one, er, major exception) and 2)the dolls were produced by a company called Durham Toys, whoever they were/are. So while it still doesn't present us the full picture, at least we know more now than we did.

That head doesn't really match the body, making Hot Lips kinda creepy!